Advances in media delivery technologies allow users to playback most media content “on-demand”, e.g., at a specific time the user requests to playback the content. By playing back media content on-demand, for instance, users can watch television broadcasts at times that are convenient for them rather than when actually broadcast. On-demand playback is enabled by technologies such as digital video recorders (DVRs). One issue with such technologies is that some of the technologies allow users to skip advertisements, e.g., by fast-forwarding through commercial breaks. While doing so may be convenient for users, advertisers often pay significant sums of money to have their advertisements included in the media and want users to be exposed to the advertisements.
Further, some media content may not have many breaks for advertisements, if any. Thus, the number of advertisements that can be shown during dedicated breaks, in connection with such content, is limited. In soccer, for example, halves of continuous action last forty-five minutes. During these halves, there are no breaks that last a predetermined amount of time though. Consequently, soccer games do not provide opportunities for commercial breaks to show a predetermined number of advertisements at regular intervals. Rather, in connection with soccer games, commercial breaks may be inserted before a game, between halves, and after the game. By having breaks solely at these times, however, the number of opportunities (in terms of commercial breaks) for advertisers to expose users to advertisements in connection with broadcast soccer is limited.
Due to these issues, techniques have been developed for ensuring that users are exposed to advertising in connection with consuming media content. Some such techniques include prohibiting users that watch on-demand content from skipping advertisements (e.g., by prohibiting a user from fast-forwarding through a commercial break), overlaying advertising content over video media content (e.g., on a field during a live broadcast of a sporting event), and so forth. However, these conventional techniques have a variety of different drawbacks. For example, prohibiting advertisements from being skipped can annoy users because they may prefer to watch the content without having to watch the advertisements. Traditional pre-roll and mid roll advertisements disrupt users' content viewing experiences, for instance. Another technique for exposing users to advertisements is to overlay advertisements onto primary video content. However, overlays can distract users from the primary video content. Additionally, conventional techniques for overlaying advertisements may require expensive recording hardware and/or client-side processing hardware. Due to such drawbacks, conventional techniques for ensuring advertisement exposure in connection with media content viewing may not result in an ideal consumption experience for users.